Snapshots
by A Guy Named Goo
Summary: A collection of ficlets I started writing on my LJ depicting important and not so important scenes in 6 year old Himiko's life with her brother.
1. Smoke

Disclaimer- I don't own Get Backers.

**Smoke**

Yamato threw another greasy rag into the fire place in the small, unventilated wooden shack. Himiko began to cough harder, reaching up to wipe her stinging eyes, while her older brother seemed unphased by it. In fact, he had a cigarette dangling from his lips as he filled the small space with smoke.

Had he not known it was necessary, Yamato would have stopped. He didn't like hurting his little sister in any way, shape, or form, but she was six years old. If he wanted to have enough time to train her completely, he had to start as soon as possible, and he'd been her age when he'd been subjected to the same training methods.

Pushing away from the smoke from around him, Yamato finally found the tiny girl on her hands and knees on the floor. "You need to relax, Himiko. Relax your lungs. Concentrate on the clean air. There _is_ oxygen in here, you just have to find it," he encouraged her.

"Aniki..." Himiko said softly, looking up at her brother with watering violet eyes. She could only see his silouhette through the smoke from the light of the single closed window. She coughed, and her voice sounded raw when she spoke.

"You can do it, Himiko. I know you can. Everyone in our family can," Yamato told her again. "Just think about the clean air. Imagine it. Imagine that it's hiding in all of this smoke and you have to find it."

Himiko began to cough hard, and Yamato sighed, picking her up and opening the door of the shack. He brought her away from where the smoke was spilling out of the door and lay her down on the grass, allowing her to cough her lungs clean again. She was technically built for situations like that, and he knew that she would recover from her experience with smoke inhalation quickly enough.

"Aniki, I don't want to go back in there," Himiko whispered pitifully, curling up on herself as she coughed.

Yamato just sat down on the grass with her, deciding he could clean up the mess he had made in the shack in a little bit. He wouldn't bring her back in today, but he would have to do it again soon. Otherwise she'd never learn the breathing technique that she needed to use the perfumes. The smoke was far safer than any of his scents, even if it was still painful. He never wanted to hurt her, but there was no other way for her to learn.


	2. Encounter

**Encounter**

Himiko didn't know that he was watching her. Almost from her birth, and certainly since her brother had been her primary caregiver, he had been observing her from a safe distance. But as she sat in front of her home on the grass, gathering tiny white blooms in her clumsy, chubby hands, she didn't seem to have such paranoid thoughts as black-clad strangers watching her every move from a distance.

Yamato didn't often let Himiko go outside on her own, but as he worked on his perfumes in the kitchen he had to take precautions. After all, it was a necessity and she hadn't yet learned how to safely breathe around the chemicals in the air. So under his careful supervision from the kitchen window the girl played. He was also an unacknowledged audience to her blissful playtime.

It would take years for Himiko to register why this was an auspicious day in her childhood, for at the time it seemed like another event in a long series of events that weren't up to her to determine the importance of. A shadow fell over her, and she could pick up a strange smell that she didn't like very much; a stale, metallic odor that she wouldn't be able to determine the exact origin of for a long time. But at that young age she'd already developed her heightened sense of smell, and she crinkled her nose slightly as she looked up at the stranger curiously.

"Hi," she said plainly, looking up at the seemingly gigantic figure before her. He was blocking the sunlight, casting her in shadows. She couldn't see his face very well beneath the shadowy wide brim of his hat. She could only see his mouth, which tugged up into a smile as he stare down at the little girl.

"Hello," he returned cordially, reaching up to tip his hat slightly to her as if she were a fully grown gentlewoman. "What are you doing down there?"

Himiko shrugged, opening her hand and examining the straggly stems of the tiny flowers that were clustered in her hand. "Picking flowers," she explained. "Aniki wanted me to play outside today."

The tall man crouched down so that he was closer to her level, examining the flowers in her hand more closely. "I see. Is there any particular reason he wanted you to play outside?"

Himiko nodded, not registering that she shouldn't be talking to strangers at all, let alone this one. "He needs to work on his perfumes," she explained. "I can't come inside until he's done. I can't breathe yet and he doesn't want me to get hurt." She reached over and pulled up a clump of flowers all at once without any finesse. "But I'm getting better! The smoke from his cigarettes doesn't make me cough anymore!" She sounded very proud of this.

"That's wonderful," the man said, his smile getting wider. He reached up to pull his hat up for a moment, not quite revealing his eyes. "Your brother sounds like he takes very good care of you."

Himiko smiled brightly then, lighting up her naturally dark features. She nodded emphatically. "Uh huh! Aniki knows everything! And he is big and strong and he keeps me safe, and he takes me to work with him and shows me stuff!"

"He sounds like a terrific man," the stranger agreed. He tossed a glance to the kitchen window, then stood up again. "I am afraid I have to be going now. But it was very nice speaking with you."

Himiko stood up as well, dropping one handful of flowers and wiping her hand on her shorts. "Okay," she said. She examined the other handful of flowers, then held them up as high as she could. "Here. For you."

The man took the little flowers in his glove hand. "Thank you very much," he said genuinely, his smile tingeing his words.

"You're welcome!" Himiko said, sitting herself on the ground.

By the time Yamato got around to looking out the window again, the visitor was gone. He would never be informed of the man's presence at his home that day in his lifetime.


	3. Grass

**Grass**

Himiko was fortunate enough to have been raised in relative seclusion. Although she sometimes asked about the lack of neighbors or children her own age to play with, between working and training Himiko had a pretty full life without the worry that some stranger would harm her in her own home. As such, Yamato had to ease up a bit of his "overprotective guardian" role when his little sister asked him if she could go outside to play shortly after her sixth birthday.

Yamato had bundled her up more than he usually did when he took her out, knowing that a cold would set their training back at least a couple of weeks until she regained her sense of smell. But after applying so many layers to his little sister that she was more clothes than person (much to her chagrin), he finally opened the door and let her slowly waddle outside.

It was bitingly cold outside, despite it having been an otherwise pretty mild winter. Very little snow was on the ground, and the first thing Himiko did upon achieving her freedom from the confines of the indoors was seat herself in front of a little pile of it. It was hard to move her arms around the many layers of clothes, but she managed to slowly fashion some sort of abstract sculpture from the frigid substance as well as the rocks and twigs she had found underneath it.

Having exhausted her amusement with that activity, she tried to maneuver her clothes-laden body to stand back up. Instead she only managed to fall back down ungracefully, cushioned by the four pairs of pants she was wearing. Undaunted, she rocked herself back and forth, trying to catch herself on her arms and use them as a means of getting back to her feet, but this plan, too, only ended with gravity as the winner.

Himiko glanced at the kitchen window for a moment, wondering if she should call for her brother's help. She sat still, giving this careful consideration, before deciding she didn't want to get him involved just yet. If she called out to him he would only bring her back inside, and she wasn't quite ready to return to the confines of her home just yet.

With that decision made, Himiko scanned her surroundings. If she couldn't get up, what was there to do? Well, if she couldn't get up, she might as well go down. With that, she let herself fall backwards unceremoniously, arms and legs spread-eagle. She moved them back and forth a little bit in a weak attempt at a snow angel, but finally gave up, staring into the gray February sky.

After a few moments of considerable study, the sky seemed to reward Himiko for her patience: the first few snowflakes fell down onto the part of her face that was still bare. One of the snowflakes landed in her eye, and she closed it for a moment, before opening them again to stare up into the swirling vortex of snowflakes around her. She cocked her head to the side, wondering if this was what the grass saw.

After a few more moments of wondering about the life and times of a blade of grass, a shadow fell over Himiko. She squinted, trying to see who it was, before raising her arms as much as she could manage. "Aniki!"

Yamato crouched down next to Himiko, eyeing the thin layer of snow that had begun to build up on her. "What are you doing here on the ground?" he asked her gently, sounding worried.

"I fell. Couldn't get up," Himiko said plainly. She rocked her way up into a sitting position, and then tried once again to achieve a standing position, her methods once again failing her. She looked up a her brother with an "I told you so" look.

"Why didn't you call me to come and get you?" Yamato asked, standing up and picking her up. He held her high in the air for a moment, before putting her back on the ground.

"I didn't wanna come in just yet," was the answer. As Himiko waddled toward the entrance of the house behind her brother, she looked at the spot where she had been laying down. "Ne, Aniki?"

"Yeah?" Yamato asked, lighting a cigarette.

"Can we move all of the snow away?" she asked, grabbing the railing of the steps with both hands as she waddled her way up sideways.

Yamato raised an eyebrow. "Why? I thought you liked snow."

Himiko nodded. "I do. But if the grass is all covered up, how can it see anymore?"


	4. Work

**Work**

Himiko never questioned going to work with her brother. There really was no reason for her to: she'd been accompanying him for as long as she could remember in some form or another, and having no frame of comparison meant that she didn't know that things were done any other way. About all she knew was that when she went out at night with her brother it was "work", and that she wasn't supposed to talk about "work" with other people. Although later in life Himiko would realize that at that young an age she had been more of a hindrance to her older brother than a help, at that point in her life all she knew was that she worked, and work was fun.

It was very late on a pleasantly warm spring night when Yamato went out on a job, once again bringing his little sister with him. He'd slunk into a house, telling the little girl to stay behind the hedges. And thus, the boring part of the job began. Himiko sat down alone behind the shrubbery, idly pulling up handfuls of grass and letting it fall back to the earth like natural confetti as she waited for the fun part to begin.

After what seemed like an eternity to Himiko, she finally voices. She looked up, but couldn't quite see what was above the square bush, but she tensed anyway. Her brother had warned her of what would happen if someone found her and caught her: she'd be taken away from him. And that was the last thing in the world she wanted.

"I think I see something," a man's voice said. Suddenly, a light flashed into her eyes, causing her to shrink out of it's glare. It moved aside, and Himiko looked up to see the face of a man that seemed quite old to her, although he was probably only middle-aged. "Hey, come and see this..."

A chubbier man appeared over the bush, analyzing Himiko under the beam of his partner's flashlight. "A kid? The boss has us searching every inch of this place just because some kid snuck onto his lawn?"

"She looks kinda young to be out here all by herself," the first man said, as if she were an inanimate object. "Do you think someone's looking for her?"

"Why don't you ask her?" the second man asked. He leaned forward a little to put his face closer to the little girl's. "Hello there. Can you talk?"

Himiko didn't know what to do. Her brother had expressly forbid her from talking to _anyone_ while she was working, and yet these men would probably hurt her if she didn't answer. Instead of responding verbally, she nodded, cowering further in her place.

"What are you doing here?" the first man asked as gently as possible. He waited a few moments, and when he received no answer, he tried again. "Did get lost? Is someone looking for you?"

Himiko could smell a trace of something in the air. She yawned, but continued to look up at the men. They both also yawned, but found themselves unable to stay awake and fell over, fast asleep.

"Yeah, I am," Yamato said, putting the perfume he was holding away. He had a bulky-looking bag on his back that he hadn't gone in with. "Ready to go?"

Himiko nodded, then yawned again. Yamato looked behind him, then reached into his belt and pulled out another bottle of perfume. "Here, smell this."

Himiko obeyed, inhaling the pleasant scent deeply. Her eyes opened wide and she stood up, brushing the grass off of her clothes. Yamato put the perfume away and lifted her up. "There, you feeling all better?"

"Uh huh!" Himiko said cheerfully.

"All right. Here we go..."

Yamato put Himiko on his shoulders, and she leaned forward and clasped her hands over his forehead. He broke into a dead run, slipping into the woods and running as fast as he could, making sure Himiko wasn't slipping. This was the fun part of working: seeing her brother use his perfumes, and then running away with him.

They got to his car, and he fastened Himiko into the passenger seat before diving into the driver's side of the convertible. Work was also the only time that he took his car out, which just added to the excitement.

Peeling out into the night, Himiko finally allowed herself to giggle and throw her hands in the air as if she were on some sort of thrill-ride. If this was what work was always like, she couldn't wait to be able to do all of it herself.


	5. Height

**Height**

Himiko was, undoubtedly, a tiny girl. At first this fact alarmed Yamato, but after a day of allowing her to play in the park with children her own age he realized that, while amongst the smallest of the group, she was still in the normal, healthy height range for a girl her age, if on the low end of it. He had briefly been alarmed when a woman at the park had seemed surprised to find out that Himiko was six already, having believed her to be younger, but he dismissed it. The fact was, Himiko was just destined to be small.

Undaunted by her diminutive stature, however, Himiko was a clever girl who was more than capable of improvising ways around her height problem. The best shows of her ingenuity could be found in the kitchen: Yamato had allowed her to do certain things on her own, like pour dry cereal or get a cookie. Somehow she had interpreted these small concessions as a sign that she could get these things whenever she wanted without any assistance from her brother.

On more than one occasion Yamato had come into the kitchen to find Himiko climbing on top of chairs, overturned buckets, and the footstool from the living room, pulling herself onto the counter and sitting up on it like it was no big deal when her brother came in. Time and again Yamato had lectured her on the dangers of climbing on unstable surfaces and told her to ask for assistance in the future. It would work for a while, and then he'd catch her doing it again, trying to assert her self-reliance prematurely.

"I can do it by myself!" Himiko would insist, grabbing a box of cereal as Yamato lifted her up off the counter and put her back on the floor, letting her scurry off to another part of the house with her hard-earned prize to be lectured later.

One day Yamato walked into the kitchen to see her grunting and struggling to open the refrigerator door. After observing her for a few minutes, Yamato had gone up and opened the door for her, but she had just pouted and slammed it closed again.

"Aniki, when am I gonna be big?" Himiko whined, standing on her tip-toes for a few moments before nearly falling over.

As she began to slip, Yamato leaned over and scooped her up easily. "Soon enough," he told her. "But if you were bigger, I wouldn't be able to do this!" He put her up on his shoulders and began to walk around the kitchen with her, smiling as she began to laugh joyfully.

When Yamato put her back down on the floor, he found some part of him wishing she'd never have to get any older or any bigger than she was right then.


End file.
